Steve Sopchak loves his work at The Square Studio in Marcellus, N.Y.

Here's a song clip of "Music from Another Room," recorded in The Square Studio by The Brilliant Light. Singer and acoustic guitarist Tim Paige shares vocals with Elise Miklich of White Picket Fence. Steve Sopchak is on electric guitars and bass, and Kiel Feher is on drums.

Courtesy of Steve Sopchak

As 2008 was winding down, I received an e-mail from Steve Sopchak.

He wanted to make sure I noticed that an increasing load of the local music I was writing about was being recorded at The Square Studio in Marcellus.

His studio, to be more exact.

In fact, the debut CDs from Syracuse rock groups White Picket Fence and Jackson's Kid Summer were recorded at The Square Studio, and I rated them Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, on my list of my 10 favorite Central New York CDs from 2008. After that list came out, I heard from Aux Records president and artist manager Ulf Oesterle that the new CD from The Brilliant Light, the solo project for Honor Bright's Tim Paige, was being recorded by Sopchak.

I drove out to The Square Studio today, where Sophak, 22, met me at the front door of the quite grand house owned by his parents, Tom and Gael Sopchak, and walked me downstairs to the basement. That's where he and his mates in the band Cletus Doesn't Care built the first room of his studio in 2001, when they were teenagers attending Marcellus High School.

Sopchak and the studio have come a long way in the past eight years.

The music lover graduated from high school in 2004. He attended SUNY Oneonta for three semesters, studying music. But something didn't strike him quite right.

"I guess on the academic side of things, I had a hard time learning about how the record industry was working at that time," he said, recalling about how the classroom buzz was about the effect of the digital world on sales and such. "I felt like everything I heard would probably be different in a year or a year-and-a-half anyway."

So he transferred to SUNY Oswego, where he graduated with a degree in marketing in May 2008. By then, he knew that he wanted The Square Studio to be his full-time gig.

"If I was going to own my own business, I might as well know how to market it," he said with a smile.

Indeed.

From June 2008 to now, Sopchak has worked with 20 to 25 different clients in the studio that now stretches through four basement rooms. Some are young bands that want him to engineer two songs for them to put up on their myspace pages. Eight or nine of the projects have been EPs or full-length CDs, Sopchak said. On the most serious side of the scale has been "Sierra Sunrise," the CD from Jackson's Kid Summer. He worked with the musicians a whole month on that one.

One of the projects is a CD by his own band, Eyes Averted, a punk-rock trio for which Sopchak plays drums. That project provided a lesson in Internet recording; one band mate moved to Texas and another to Illinois during the process.

Sopchak says he's finding there's enough studio work in Central New York to go around.

He's got a deal with veteran engineer Jocko at his More Studios to master some of the high-end work. "When bands can afford it, it's good to get his ear in on the project," Sopchak says. "Jocko has been kind of my mentor. When I was in Cletus, I saw him in his studio surrounded by knobs and things, and I thought it was cool."

Does he feel in competition with the more established More Studios and SubCat Music Studios?

"No," Sopchak says simply. "Not at all. We help each other out."

Sopchak says he truly loves his work.

"I record these 16- or 17-year-olds, and I think, 'I was them,' " Sopchak says. "My favorite part is growing with the people that I begged to come here for free when I started."

He's worked for years with Jack Nolan of Jackson's Kid Summer, and Paige and mates in Honor Bright, Sopchak says.

"If I never get any bigger than it is now, working with unsigned, independent bands, and I can sustain a living, I'd still be incredibly happy waking up and doing this every day," he said. "But I would eventually like working with bands that would be involved with national distribution and stuff."

Sopchak says the average cost at The Square Studio is about $200 a day, but he adds that "clients are given price quotes on a case-by-case basis, and the quotes are tailored to their unique needs.

Sopchak says he's talked about viability in the Syracuse-area market with musicians, friends and family. That sort of thinking is in the genes; his dad owns his own marketing consulting firm, New Market Partners.

Sopchak's conclusion: "I think there's an abundance of talented people, and they all want to get their message out in their own unique way."

In eight months, he feels, The Square Studio has developed a niche.

"I work with mostly younger bands," he says. "I've never advertised. It's all word of mouth. Right when business is slowing down, I always get that call that keeps it going. I'm always taken aback by how many talented people there are in this area."